In this episode of CampusIDNews Chats, Alex Khamu, Global Business Development Manager at Unicard Systems, shares how the company is helping colleges and universities modernize campus card issuance through cloud-based software, online photo submission, digital IDs, and self-service kiosk technology.

With more than 40 years in the industry and a strong presence across Australia, the U.S., and Canada, Unicard provides a flexible suite of solutions that can operate as a full campus card ecosystem or as standalone modules. He explains how institutions can integrate Unicard’s platform with existing one card systems, student information systems, HR systems, access control, and library platforms through single sign-on and interoperable integrations.

Reducing manual work for campus card offices

A major focus of the conversation is the growing adoption of self-service campus card kiosks. He highlights how students can complete much of the issuance process on their own, including remote photo submission, authentication, and kiosk-based card pickup. In many cases, the only manual step left for campus card staff is approving a submitted photo.

We have over 80% of the universities in Australia, and we've also got many solutions running in the US and Canada as well.

Alex also shares examples of institutions using the technology, including MIT, Confederation College, Amherst University, and Howard University. He explains how these deployments are helping campus card offices reduce administrative workload while improving efficiency and scalability for institutions of all sizes.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Alex from Unicard Systems. I'm the global business development manager. I've been with the company for 15 years, and our company's been around for 40 years.

We're an HID partner locally in Australia. We are one of the biggest there, providing all the hardware there and overseas as well. We also provide all the software for campus card issuance. That is a whole suite of products, not just one solution. We provide the ID system which is cloud based, U.S. locally hosted here. It's not only the cloud issuance portion of it for campus card physical issuance and digital issuance, we also actually supply the range of products to go along with it for online photo submission, physical kiosk printing, self-service printing, and also digital ID wallet issuance as well.

We are quite interoperable. We work with all the common one card partners. If you have a one card solution, we can integrate to all these different types of systems.

We offer single sign on and data in through your H.R. and student management system as well as data out through to your access control system or library system. And then also pushing any information we need to things like your one card systems as well. So our solution is there to be used as a whole solution, or we can use it as a modular solution as well.

We can provide our card issuance or just our photo upload module or just our kiosks. So we're very flexible in how we work and scaling it to each institution's needs. In saying that, our solution is used mainly in education.

We have over 80% of the universities in Australia, and here in the US and Canada we've also got many solutions running as well.

We've seen a really great interest and uptake in our self-service kiosks. There is a real return on investment on those. It takes out a lot of the manual work for the campus offices. The students essentially are able to do the whole process themselves. When they're onboarded, they're going through that system automatically, and they receive an email to essentially pick up their card from the kiosk. The only manual task that the campus card office will have to do is click approve on a photo. We handle all the other processes automatically through integrations and the self-service portions of our solution.

Recently we've been partnering with Atrium, and two of their sites – Amherst University and Howard University – are going live next month with our kiosks integrated directly with the Atrium solution.

Our solution is used in all sorts of different industries.

We have a lot of systems here running in the U.S. and also Canada – varying between our ID system, photo upload, and kiosks. We do have a great focus here in the U.S. with our kiosks, our self-service campus card kiosks.

That ranges from universities, such as MIT, that are using eight of our kiosks for card issuance. And then it can go to smaller colleges like Confederation College in Canada that was using just one of our kiosks for issuance.

Recently we've been partnering with Atrium and two of their sites, Amherst University and Howard University, are going live next month with our kiosks integrated directly with Atrium Campus. Students will be able to visit the kiosk, scan a QR code, login with single sign on, authenticate themselves at the kiosk, and have their own campus card issued. That really takes out a lot of the manual tasks for the campus card office and the ROI is something that has really been proven across not only here locally in the U.S., but proven in Australia, UK, and other parts of Asia, that it really is a great product.

If you want to learn more about the Unicard Systems offering, please feel free to get in touch at any time. We're always here to help and provide our experience and our knowledge on our complete solution offerings, whether it's just one part of our system or the whole package.

We can definitely assist, no matter the size of the college. Very flexible. Get in touch with me any time. Again, my name is Alex Khamu, Global Business Development Manager at Unicard. My email is pretty easy to remember. It's Alex at Unicard dot com dot AU.